


Kavinsky in the Light

by In_agony_and_ecstasy



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Coming Out, Coming of Age, Depression, Dreams, Enemies to Lovers, Explicit Sexual Content, First Kiss, First Time, Joseph Kavinsky Lives, Joseph Kavinsky redemption arc, M/M, Recovery, Redemption, Self-Acceptance, Self-Love, Slow Burn, Smoking, Suicidal Thoughts, self-hate, the dream thieves alternate ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:08:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 16,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23235226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/In_agony_and_ecstasy/pseuds/In_agony_and_ecstasy
Summary: At the last possible second, Ronan pulls Kavinsky out of the way of his dream dragon's path. Then Kavinsky gets arrested, and five years in prison. Once he's in prison, Ronan plans on visiting Kavinsky in their dreams, to keep an eye on him and make sure that he isn't bringing stuff from his dreams back with him to reality. But over the course of several weeks, what starts as supervision turns into something else Ronan is finally ready to accept he's wanted as long as Kavinsky has.
Relationships: Joseph Kavinsky/Ronan Lynch
Comments: 34
Kudos: 70





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’m writing this because I read The Dream Thieves and couldn't believe that Maggie wrote a story that narratively rewarded a middle-age murderer-for-hire who felt no remorse with a deux-ex-machina style redemption arc and a happy heterosexual we-made-eye-contact-once love story AND narratively punished an underage, queer-coded, eastern European-stereotyped victim of drug addiction and physical abuse with a tragedy-porn style suicide IN THE SAME BOOK. She decided that an overly-possessive teenage kidnapper deserved to kill himself but a middle-aged serial killer deserved a second chance. She said lives like Kavinsky’s – young, queer, abused, and already drug-addicted – don’t matter to teenage readers who may be dealing with very similar issues. 
> 
> Kavinsky was young. Too young to even know who he was. Too young to even be the same person for the rest of his life. Not too young to not know better, but definitely young enough to learn from his mistakes. 
> 
> I just can’t get over the fact that a grown woman wrote this story for a teenage audience. This story that suggests lives like Kavinsky’s don’t matter and that they’re irredeemable and should just kill themselves. This story that suggests grown remorseless serial killers deserve a second chance and a love story to boot. I hate it. I hate it. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever read in my life.
> 
> So anyway. Rant over. I wrote an alternate ending. An ending that in my head, makes a fuckton more sense and also isn’t going to make any queer drug-addicted and abused teenager question whether or not they should kill themselves because they’ve made a few bad mistakes.

I sat against the headboard of my bed at The Barns, staring at my phone. In a few minutes, it would be lights-out at Augusta Correctional Center, and Kavinsky would be going to sleep for the first time in his new cell.

I’d spent every day since his conviction worrying about tonight. Being a dreamer, the prison itself would be a minor inconvenience to Kavisnky if he really wanted to escape. He could just dream something up. A prison guard uniform. A prison guard ID. Or if he wanted to be less stealthy – which for him, was really dependent on his mood – he could just dream up a gun or a bomb. The options were endless. 

But I didn’t think he wanted to escape, and that was the thing. 

Because after I pulled him out of the way of his dream dragon’s path, and it crashed in a blaze behind him, we heard the sirens in the distance. The conscious party-goers recognized the sound and fled immediately, causing the chaos from a moment ago when the dream creatures were still fighting to continue. In every direction people were running and screaming and jumping into cars. Even K’s friends were fleeing. That left him, Gansey, Blue, Matthew, me and the dragon left to be discovered by police who would expect an explanation that made sense. 

Kavinsky, though still collapsed in my arms, with tear streaks on his face, didn’t even hesitate once he realized the police were about to arrive. He willed his dream dragon, now injured, to fly off in the distance just as mine had, likely to the same place he hid all of his other more conspicuous dream things. 

When the police arrived all that was left was us and the demolished fair grounds. 

And before they could even begin questioning us, even attempt to split us up and get our individual stories, Kavinsky looked at me, then at Matthew, and threw his arms up. 

The cops – who’d all pulled him over or arrested him at some point before this, who very likely even knew about his famous Fourth of July parties – didn’t even question who was responsible for all this. Though they looked as surprised as I must have that he’d given himself up. 

They asked him what caused the destruction and he said simply, “Fireworks. Pyrotechnics. Molotov Cocktails. The works.”

They slammed him against the hood of one of their cars and as he was handcuffed from behind, he looked up at me again. 

I could’ve sworn he smiled, but it did not look happy. Or at all like himself. 

His bail was set at a hundred thousand, which of course was nothing for him. I saw on the news that Proko bailed him out, but didn’t see him or hear from him at all. 

Come time for the trial, I sat in the pews as it was determined that even though he was seventeen he would be tried as an adult for second degree kidnapping, as well as possession of a controlled substance with intent to deal, and the property damage done to the fair grounds.

Immediately, he plead guilty to everything. 

When he did, I stared at him from the back of the courtroom. From there, all I could see was his pale, sallow frame. A bone in his spine jutted out of the back of his neck where he didn’t have enough muscle or fat to cover it. I realized I’d never seen it before because he always wore that gold chain. Now he didn’t, nor the gold earring. 

Even the judge looked shocked. Everyone did. Kavinsky had been in many courtrooms, with many impressive lawyers, all of whom had gotten him off in one way or another. I knew this because everyone knew this about him. The law had never been able to get this close to him before. And they were only able to now because he had let them. He had surrendered.

A pain I’d never felt before wound its way around my heart. It was hard to pin down the source. I didn’t feel sorry for him because he was going to spend five years in prison. Especially not when he had the chance to get out on parole. Especially not when he’d chosen it freely, and gotten less time than he would have if he’d been tried and found guilty instead. He’d kidnapped my brother. He’d threatened my brother’s life. And while I didn’t think Kavinsky had any real intention of making good on that threat, in the state he’d been in that day – He had relinquished all control. 

The pain I felt was more to do with how unlike Kavinsky it was to permit someone else to determine his fate. 

He hadn’t killed himself on the fourth but he might as well have. 

That I thought, was the real reason I hurt. Even after everything he’d done, I still didn’t think he deserved to die. 

But he thought he did.

I laid down to sleep at the same time he would. 

…

He was not in the dream forest that night. He wasn’t there the next night, or the night following it. 

I reasoned with myself. He had stopped going to the dream forest when he slept. I should stop looking for him there. It was that simple.

But that didn’t sit right with me. 

That pain I felt at the trial tightened. Had he killed himself after all? 

…

Finally, on the fourth night, I entered the dream forest and saw hidden in a field of too-tall grass the hood of a white Mitsubishi. The grass rustled as I strode through it. The closer I got, the quieter the forest was.

I opened the passenger side door. Kavinsky sat in the driver’s seat, one hand slung out the window holding a lit cigarette. He stared out the windshield, wearing his white shades. Even if he hadn’t been wearing them, I could tell his expression was vacant. 

“Back so soon for more?” he breathed, not even glancing at me. 

I swallowed with some difficulty. His skin was paler than I’d ever seen it. And he was coated in a mist of sweat. His hair was slicked back with grease. As he took a drag of his dream cigarette, his arms trembled with the effort. He even looked skinnier, in his new prison clothes, which I didn’t think was possible on him. 

“What the fuck happened to you?” I said.

He smiled, and then removed his sunglasses. I jerked my head back at the sight of his blood-shot eyes, framed by deep purple bags. 

“Take a wild guess,” he said, his arms shaking even more. 

“Is this from – from the drugs?” 

He snorted. “It’s from the not-drugs, actually. From all the not-alcohol and the not-nicotine and the not-pills and the not-cocaine I’ve had the last four days.”

“You look like shit,” I said. “Is this why you haven’t – I mean, have you even slept?”

“That’s the thing about sleep pills,” he said, and shrugged. “No more pills, no more sleep.”

“So you’ve just been….In withdrawals? Awake? For – for four _days_?”

“ _There_ you go, Princess. Knew you’d catch up.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said, still staring at him. I couldn’t even imagine what hell he’d been through. The closest comparison I had ever experienced was a really bad hangover. Even that never lasted four days. Without sleep. 

I was suddenly grateful I’d stopped using those pills. I should have guessed that he hadn’t considered the consequences of what would happen if he suddenly stopped using dream sleep aids. 

Which reminded me why I was here. Why I was supposed to be here.

“You haven’t been dreaming,” I said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Excellent deduction.”

“Why?” I demanded. “You could escape. You could – could –”

“Absolutely _own_ this prison? Yeah, you don’t think I’ve thought about that? How I could be a fucking _king_ in this place? With the porn, and drugs and weapons I could ‘smuggle’ in here?” He laughed then. “And the guards wouldn’t be able to prove jack shit.”

I turned away from him in my seat, to look out the windshield with him. “Then why haven’t you?”

I wanted to know why he didn’t escape, more than I wanted to know why he hadn’t decided to be the king of prison. But he’d ignored me when I brought it up. Which meant he was not going to talk about it. He wasn’t even going to acknowledge the concept’s existence. 

“You must really think I’m stupid,” he said then, more amused than ever, “If you thought I’d risk the government finding out they can produce an infinite supply of anything they want if they just manage to arrest, imprison and torture enough three-D printers like me.” 

I hadn’t thought of that. These last four days, Kavinsky probably hadn’t just been lying in bed, shaking and sweating, on the brink of death. He’d probably been put to work, building something the old-fashion way. With a screw-driver and parts. And possibly, something that required a battery. Or an outlet. Or oil. _Power_. 

Which dream things didn’t need. 

I raised my eyebrows and exhaled. Thank God he’d thought of that. 

“Did you get what you came for?” he asked then. “Or should I say, what your master sent you for?”

My blood burned. I clenched my fist. 

“Yeah, I did,” I said. “So I’m going.”

Kavinsky grinned then. Wider than ever.

“Just like last time,” he said. “A hit-and-run.”

I left the dream forest and Kavinsky behind.


	2. Chapter 2

I didn’t return for another week. 

If I was honest, I didn’t know why I decided to go. I knew he wasn’t bringing dream stuff back. He obviously wasn’t planning to escape. I could forget about him if I wanted to. He didn’t have to be part of my life anymore if I didn’t want him to be. Yet here I was, treading through the grass and the lightning bugs walking toward a white Mitsubishi. Kavinsky sat on the hood this time, smoking his dream cigarette.

He smiled as I approached, without looking at me. 

“Back to check up on me again?”

He didn’t use a degrading pet name or insult, so I knew this was Kavinsky’s version of politeness. He didn’t want to scare me off. 

“Well, you can relax,” he said, when I didn’t respond. “I still haven’t brought anything back.”

I sat on the hood of his car beside him. This close I could see how different he looked, again. But this time it was much better. Whatever weight he’d lost, he’d gained back, and then some. He no longer looked so sallow. His hair was clean, and buzzed closely to his scalp along his ears. There was some color in his lips and cheeks again. His brown eyes were clear. And his hands weren’t trembling as he smoked. 

“Then why do you come here?” I asked. “Why not just…dream? Like normal.”

He held his cigarette up. “I don’t take any of these back, so I can’t get my fix. But this is almost like the real thing.” He gestured to his car. “This feels real too. It’s better than nothing.”

I sighed. 

We fell into a silence, both of us completely aware that I had no reason to be there and nothing I needed to say. But I didn’t leave and in any case, I could sense he didn’t want me to.

So we talked. It was weird, just talking to Joseph Kavinsky, like he was anyone other than himself. But we did. We talked about prison, and what it was like, but not why he had chosen to stay. We talked about The Barns, and Gansey’s quest, and looking for Blue’s mom, and Cabeswater too. He, I only just realized, had no idea how this forest was connected to the Ley Line, and Gansey’s quest, or that the trees spoke Latin and knew that he had stolen from them. All he’d ever known was that he, unlike other people, could take stuff out of his dreams if he wanted to.

Mostly he took all this information in stride. It didn’t seem to concern him. 

“Guess you got what you wanted,” he said. 

“What?”

“I stopped stealing.” 

I huffed out a laugh, but without much humor. Guilt twinged in my gut. Kavinsky had not disrupted the Ley Line with his dreaming. He’d been dreaming and swiping stuff for years, without getting caught. And he hadn’t even known the forest was sentient, because he wasn’t the graywaren and it didn’t communicate with him. I almost wanted to apologize, but bit my tongue. After everything he’d done on the fourth, I owed him nothing. 

“So,” he finally said, after I’d been quiet too long. I could tell, due to the nature of us being in each other’s heads, that he was getting anxious. Worried that if he didn’t keep me talking I’d leave. 

I looked at him. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. Instead he flicked his cigarette and watched the ashes float away.

“If it wasn’t Dick you wanted, who was it?” 

Now he was anxious for another reason. My answer. 

“Parrish,” I said, without hesitating. I felt no need to hide it from myself the way I used to. I didn’t want to act like I was ashamed of it in front of Kavinsky, of all people, either. 

Even as I said it though, I knew it wasn’t true. Or rather, it wasn’t the whole truth. I had felt something for Adam the moment I had seen him and it had never gone away, but it wasn’t as if it hadn’t been Gansey at one point, or at several points, just as Kavinsky had suspected. 

It wasn’t as if it hadn’t been Kavinsky himself, either. I knew that now. Actually, I’d always known. Just like I’d always known I was gay. But like knowing I was gay, I didn’t want to know I’d ever had feelings for Kavinsky. So I just buried that knowledge alive and let it grow into rage.

“Parrish,” Kavinsky said now, and laughed. Then he said louder, “ _Parrish?_ I bet he can’t even drive stick.”

My eyes widened and I whipped my head in his direction. “You – K, were you spying on us?”

His brow furrowed. “Whoa, what? Fuck, no. What makes you think – unless –”

“How’d you know he couldn’t drive –?”

“Oh my God, I was fucking right!” he yelled. Then he was rolling over on the hood of his car, laughing, and after a minute, clutching his stomach. Despite myself, I couldn’t help but smile. Finally he added, “I fucking knew it. You can just tell by looking at him.”

“I taught him how, not too long ago,” I said. “Dumb shit fucking stalled my car.” 

He couldn’t stop laughing. He threw his head back and threaded his hands through his hair after he finally caught his breath. Then he took a long drag of his cigarette, shaking his head as he did so.

“Parrish, man, never would have guessed. Here I thought you popped Dick’s cherry in that old-lady Camaro and all along you had it bad for a kid who’s never gotten a speeding ticket.”

I pressed my lips together, and shrugged. I could see why it would be hard for someone like him to see what someone like me saw in Adam. I didn’t expect him to understand. 

Then I laughed, and Kavinsky gave me a quizzical look.

“Yeah, but you should see him parallel park,” I said. 

He made a disgusted noise and I grinned. 

“ _That’s_ what gets you off? No wonder it was never going to be you and me. I could never be the guy that fixes cars instead of destroying them.” 

I didn’t let him see how surprised I was how casually he’d admitted he wanted me to want him. It was so unlike him to expose himself. 

Or maybe it wasn’t, now that I thought about it. He didn’t have to tell me about his dad, who tried to kill him. Or his mom, who wasted away her days on pills he’d dreamed up for her. And even when he’d told me about it, he’d said, “I left it wide open for you,” like he was egging me on. Like he wanted to expose himself to me. 

He wasn’t egging me on, I thought now. Not really. Not like how I did when I’d called him Russian that one time and he’d waved like “go on, go on.” 

He didn’t really want me to insult him. He just wanted to connect with me. The only way he’d ever known how. 

So what was really unlike him was not that he was leaving himself exposed, or that he was giving me an opportunity to throw a low-blow, but that he wasn’t trying to hide his feelings for me. He wasn’t pretending to be straight anymore.

I opened my mouth to speak – to say what I wasn’t sure, because I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t rub salt in his wounds – but he cut me off. 

“Parrish, man.” He exhaled smoke and watched it rise in the night. “Is he even gay?”

“Don’t know. Don’t think so.” 

“Sounds like a waste of time to me,” Kavinsky said. 

“I already told you, man. Life’s not just sex, drugs, and cars.”

“Mine is,” he repeated the same words he said last time we had this conversation, but in a different tone. Then he snorted. “Was.” 

Again, I was at loss for words. Kavinsky sounded like his voice was about to shatter. Unlike last time he said those words, this time he said them without any triumph. This time, he said them like they had defeated him. Before I’d had the impression that he was saying those words because he had chosen that life. 

Now, it sounded like what he was really saying was: That life had chosen him. 

I thought about what little I knew of his life – what little I _thought_ I knew. Kavinsky had tried to kill his dad because his dad had tried to kill him. His dad was possibly in the mob. And his mother was as much of an addict as he was, so much so that she was always unconscious. 

He didn’t have parents like mine. Though my dad was absent much of the time, and possibly a criminal too, he had always loved me. My mom, though a dream, had always been there for me. She had never neglected me. She, like my dad, loved me. 

His closest friend was a forgery. He had friends, but how many of them stuck around because Kavinsky could get them anything, anything they wanted? Hell, he even spread his impossibly potent dream drugs to far-off public schools so as to ensure that people would have some reason to show up to his parties. Which people went to…to get high and to race cars. 

For years, he had either been high, driving, or both. And now I wondered what he meant by sex…

Had he ever been in a real relationship? And even if he had…wouldn’t they have just been with girls? Girls, which were impossible for him to love like that? To want like that? I thought of the girl in his dented Mitsubishi the night of his substance party. In practically one breath he’d called her both “babe” and “bitch”. At the time, I had assumed she was somebody he’d slept with, but hadn’t cared about. Until I started to suspect he was gay – it was difficult to pinpoint when that was; when he gave me the forged leather bracelets? When he gave me the IDs? When I punched him in the face and he didn’t fight back? When he trailed his finger down my spine as I fell asleep? – I had assumed that he was somewhat of a player. But if they’d all been girls…and if it’d all been to avoid suspicion…

No wonder it was just sex to him. 

I suddenly felt what I’d felt in the court house tighten even more around my heart. The same day he told me his life wasn’t about anything more than sex, drugs and cars, the same night I told him just us in our own dream world wasn’t enough, he’d said the world was a nightmare. 

How long could someone go feeling like that and not want to die? 

I swallowed. My eyes stung, but I blinked it all back. The state his mind must have been in the moment he decided to end it all – It was too unbearable to even imagine. I’d had dark times. And I’d hated myself. But even I had never wanted to die. 

I didn’t know how to say this to him. He quirked an eyebrow at me and slowly raised his cigarette to his lips – like he could tell how sorry I felt for him and he thought it was amusing. Maybe he could. Maybe he did. 

“Since when are you so open about the team you play for?” I asked, just so I wouldn’t have to hear myself think anymore. 

He smirked. “Since sharing a shower every day with a bunch of pent-up inmates.” 

For some reason, I didn’t buy this answer. But I wasn’t going to call him out on it. He wouldn’t have lied if there was any way to get the truth out of him. That was just who Kavinsky was. He couldn’t be persuaded.

I looked away from him and leaned back on the hood of his car, resting my head on my arms. “Still think ‘consent is overrated’ when some convicted pedo sees you accidently drop the soap?” 

He whipped his head in my direction. “Whoa, what? That’s not what I meant when – All I meant was I didn’t need anyone’s fucking permission – especially Daddy Dick III’s permission – to swipe shit from my own Goddamn dreams. Whoa – you thought I meant – That’s harsh, man. Brutal. How many times did you pass out around me? Hmmm? Ever wake up sore? Jesus, Lynch.”

I was quiet for a second. I hadn’t thought of that. He could have, and didn’t. I would have known. Except…

“You touched my tattoo,” I said, under my breath, because I almost didn’t want to say it. 

His mouth had already been opened to say more, but let it hang at my comment for a second. Then – I could have sworn – he blushed. 

Kavinsky sat up and cleared his throat. He was silent for at least a minute. While I waited for a response, he pulled out a dream box of brandless cigarettes from thin air, patted it against his hand, and then yanked up a new cigarette to light. But he didn’t light one. He just held them in his hand for a second, thinking. Finally, he sighed and responded. 

“That’s different, man. That’s because I thought –”

“Because you thought it was ‘going to be us’?” I asked, doing my best to not sound condescending. I knew at this point, how much it would sting.

He sighed before he answered. 

“Because I thought it already _was_ us.”

Then, just as instantaneously as he’d conjured the cigarettes… he was gone. 

A few minutes later, after accepting he wasn’t coming back, I woke up with cigarette butts in my bed.


	3. Chapter 3

A month went by without him visiting the dream forest. I almost stopped checking. My waking life was so hellish, and so exhausting, I yearned for full nights of sleep that actually felt like sleeping. 

One day, while transferring stuff from my old room at Monmouth to The Barnes, I found the leather bracelets he forged for me. Something compelled me, and I couldn’t resist. I slipped off the ones I’d worn for so long, and replaced them with the ones he gave me. They were exact copies. I couldn’t detect any difference in the sensation of them on my arm, not in weight or length. I bit at them. Same taste. 

Eventually, Gansey asked me, “You’re still checking on him, right?”

“Yeah, why?” I asked. 

“You haven’t filled me in in a while.”

Something about the way he said this irked me. 

“There’s nothing to fill you in on. He’s not stupid. He knows better than to bring shit back in there.”. 

Gansey started to raise his hands in defense. “Sorry. I just don’t trust him is all.” 

“Well, do you trust me?” 

“Of course,” he said, sounding offended I’d even ask. 

“Then you trust him.” 

Gansey raised his eyebrows. “If you trust him then why do you –”

“Visit him? Because he matters,” I said, almost without thinking, and Gansey winced. “To me. Maybe not to you, but he does to me.”

Now Gansey’s eyes flared, like the night of the substance party. “How can you just excuse what he did? You’re better than that.”

“I’m not excusing it,” I spit. “But he’s in prison now and if he was going to escape or steal things from his dreams he would have a long fucking time ago. It’s because of him you still have The Pig.”

And then I added, like an afterthought – though it wasn’t, it had been on my mind since it happened –

“He saved my life once, you know.” 

Gansey collected himself and smoothed out his expression that way that he always did. “You’re right. I’m sorry. If he matters that much to you –”

“He does.”

“Then he matters to me too.”

Gansey crossed his arms, waiting to see if his apology satisfied me. It did, so I nodded. He smiled his Ganseyest smile, and walked off. As he did, he added, “And thank him for me, won’t you? For The Pig?”

I smiled then when I knew he wouldn’t see it. 

…

Kavinsky had finally returned. Like last time, he laid back on the hood of his Mitsubishi. He watched me approach, looking me up and down, expression unreadable. Once I was leaning on the hood, his eyes wandered to my wrist. 

“Aw, Lynch, I’m touched.”

I jerked my head back in shock. I glanced at the bracelets, which even to _me_ were exact replicas. 

“How can you –?” 

He huffed out a laugh and I met his eyes. 

“What? You thought I wouldn’t recognize my own forgery?” he asked. Then he turned his head towards the woods, which sparked with lightning bugs and chirped with crickets. “Still have the glasses you gave me. Guards keepin’ ‘em in a locker with my chain and shit for when I get out.” 

“Really? Why? I didn’t get them right,” I said. 

He shrugged. “Couldn’t exactly return them.” 

That wasn’t really what I meant. I didn’t mean “Why did you keep them?” I meant “Why did you have them on your person when you were locked up?” 

But I didn’t ask him to clarify. I knew why. 

Kavinsky pulled a box of cigarettes and a lighter out of the pocket of his beige prison uniform. He slapped the cigarettes against his palm before pulling one out and lighting it. He took a drag on it. I decided to ask what I’d been wondering for some time now. I’d never asked before because it felt too much like looking directly into a bright light. 

And because I didn’t want him to disappear for good. 

But I needed to know. 

“Why’d you do it, man?” I asked. “Why’d you –”

“Kidnap your brother?” he asked, before I could finish my sentence. That wasn’t what I’d been about to ask. Now I wanted to hear what he had to say about it though. 

He sighed. “I don’t fucking know, man. Is there any good answer anyway? What can I say? The drugs made me do it? Or that I was mad at you for ditching me the second you got what you wanted? Or just that – that you weren’t fucking responding and I – I just needed something that would make you respond. Silence – I don’t even know how to describe what silence does to me. What – what doing _nothing_ does to me. I hate it so fucking much that when there’s nothing happening I do something crazy. Every time. All my life. I don’t know how to stop it. And then after it’s over – It’s always bad. Really bad. And so I just get high. Or sleep. But that day you weren’t responding. And everything was silent and still and I had to fucking make it stop. And after – I knew drugs and sleep wouldn’t have been enough.”

“That’s why you tried to kill yourself?” I asked, because it was what I had meant to ask before. A long minute passed. In that time he’d finished one cigarette and started another. His hands were trembling the way they were the first night I visited him in prison. “Because things were too bad to sleep off?”

He hesitated. “No. I mean, things _were_ too fucked to sleep off. But that’s not why I tried to kill myself. I was just – I just hate being awake, man.”

“You mean you hate being sober.” 

He shook his head. “I said what I said.”

I swallowed and tugged at my bracelets some more. “Do you still hate being awake?” 

He snorted. “What a stupid fucking question.” 

I smiled. It was a stupid question. What did he have to like about being awake now that he was in prison? 

“Well,” I said, “Next time you’re thinking about blowing yourself up, just think of Proko.”

Kavinsky’s eyebrows furrowed. He flicked his cigarette. “Why? I mean, I know he’d miss me. He visits me here every week. But if I was dead he’d just move on and – honestly, he’d be better off without me. I’m a bad influence, you see.” 

His smile fell abruptly when he saw my expression.

“What?” he asked. “I’m not going to fucking kill myself, man. Relax. Can’t you take a –”

“K, if you die, Proko will too,” I interrupted. 

He sat bolt upright on the hood of his car. “Whoa, _what_ the fuck d’you just say?”

“Well, not really die. But…he’ll go into a coma. Forever.”

“How do you know?”

“My mom,” I said. “My dad dreamed her. When he died she fell asleep. She’s been asleep ever since.” 

His eyes widened as they zoned out in the direction of the forest. He swallowed thickly and sucked the rest of his cigarette down at once. He put the butt out on the car. 

“I would have never – you have to fucking believe me, man. If I knew Proko would –”

“I believe you,” I said, simply. And I did. Kavinsky looked distraught. 

“Jesus. Fuck. God,” he said, and then quieter as he turned his head to look at me. “Thank you for saving me.”

The pain twisted on my heart constricted. I’d never seen him look like this before. Like he wasn’t trying to look like a thug. I wondered if this was what his face looked like when he was a little boy. Before he started doing drugs and racing cars and breaking laws just to show off that he could. Before he knew any of that would impress anybody.

“Forget it,” I said, and wished he would. “You saved me once too.” 

“Not from yourself,” he said, and before I could respond, he conjured an envelope out of thin air. “By the way, I almost forgot.” 

He handed me the envelope. On the front of it was Matthew’s name written in sharp and slanted letters. 

I looked at him waiting for an explanation. 

“Bring that back with you tonight. Give it to your brother. And don’t read it or I’ll make good on my promise to burn you down.”

But then he smiled, and I knew he was just giving me shit. 

…

The following day I went well out of my way to find my brother and hand him the unopened envelope I brought back with me. He was confused, and more than skeptical when I explained it was from Kavinsky.

“You’re still talking to that guy?” he asked.

“It’s not what you think,” I said, in a way I hoped did not make him think it was what I thought he’d think it was. 

He hesitated, but took the envelope. “If you say so.” 

Later, when I next saw him, he barely had time to greet me before I asked him what Kavinsky had written. 

“Oh, right,” he said, sitting down on the picnic table. “It was an apology letter. Can you believe it? He doesn’t seem like the type.”

“He’s not,” I said, placing one foot on the bench beside where he sat, and shoving my hands in the pockets of my jeans. It took me a moment to process what Matthew had just said. Kavinsky must have written the letter in the dream before I showed up. I tried to picture him conjuring up an envelope, piece of paper and pen. That much was easy. But for the life of me, I couldn’t picture him pressing the pen to paper and writing an apology. It didn’t sound real. 

“Was that all it said?” I asked.

“Pretty much.” Matthew shrugged. “Just that he’s sorry and that he was in a really fucked up place then but he’s glad they put him in prison where he can’t do shit like that anymore.”

I raised my eyebrows, searching Matthew’s indifferent expression for any sign of resentment or discomfort. But he didn’t seem at all torn over the letter. My heart raced with hope, though I knew it shouldn’t. 

“Do you believe him?” I said, less to him than to myself, I thought. 

Matthew shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like you don’t bother to write an apology letter if you don’t feel bad. Plus he didn’t even put up a fight at the trial. Or when he was arrested. I hated him when it was happening, but lately….every time I think about what happened, I just feel kind of sorry for him. I mean, he tried to kill himself right after. I think he wanted to hurt himself more than he wanted to hurt me. And, hey, everyone deserves a second chance right?”

“You don’t have to be the one who gives him a second chance,” I said.

“Yeah, but if I never give him a chance to make it up to me, how will I ever forgive him?” 

I shrugged. “You don’t have to forgive him either.”

Matthew smiled. “I want to.”

I exhaled. It shouldn’t have surprised me. Between all the Lynch brothers, Matthew was the least likely to hold a grudge. He was also the least angry. The least filled with rage. I envied him.

“Well,” I said, “Just make sure he earns it first.” 

When I drove home that day, any residual guilt I had over visiting Kavinsky in dreams washed away. 

It was so much easier to breath.


	4. Chapter 4

Kavinsky pulled two cigarettes out of the box at once and lit them both. I gave him a questioning look. He held one up to me as he placed the other between his lips. 

“Smoke this for me,” he said. 

I arched an eyebrow. “I don’t smoke.”

He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, Princess. You’re in a dream. It’s not going to taint your precious virgin lungs. Just do it.”

And for some reason I did. That was just how it was with Kavinsky. It wasn’t that I couldn’t say no. It was that he always made it seem like I’d be stupid not to say yes. And it always worked.

Almost always. 

For the first time in my life, I placed a cigarette between my lips. When I inhaled, I felt a hot mist fill my lungs that I knew felt nothing like real smoke would. When I exhaled, I did so as effortlessly as I normally breathed, rather than coughing like I would if I was awake. 

Kavinsky smiled lazily at me. 

I pinched the cigarette between my index and middle finger like people did and held it. Weird, how natural something I’d never done before could feel. 

“What?” I said, waving the cigarette around theatrically. “This ‘what gets you off’?” 

His smile widened and he shrugged, before crossing his arms behind his head. “Not much eye-candy in here, despite being full of dudes.”

I froze in place for a second. I could live for a hundred years and he could say something like that to me every day for the rest of my life and it would still scare the hell out of me. 

“That because they’re all old enough to be your dad?” I said, so he wouldn’t hear me struggle to breath. 

He snickered but shook his head. 

I swallowed, and flicked my mostly unsmoked cigarette into the grass. Then I stood up to step on it, because I didn’t know if it could set the dream forest on fire or not. Only once I’d plopped back down on the hood did Kavinsky speak again.

“Can I ask you something?” he asked, looking pointedly away from me. 

Just being asked something like that by him set me on edge. 

“Ten inches,” I said, thinking of Noah and my car and Adam and how much I missed the days when my secrets were all still secret. 

Kavinsky laughed. “Shut the fuck up, Lynch.”

“Would I lie to you? Ten inches,” I repeated what I had that day, and looked at him. Smiling against my own will. 

He huffed out another laugh, but I could tell my joke had discouraged him. Whatever he wanted to ask he no longer felt he could. 

I twisted on the hood of his car and crossed my legs. “What, man? Whatever it is, I doubt I give a shit, but ask.”

“Was it ever me?” he asked, as he exhaled smoke. “I mean, I know it’s Parrish now. I know. I don’t get it, but I’m over it, ya know? It is what it is. I just need to know I’m not fucking crazy to think – I need to know I’m not fucking crazy, man.” 

I knew what I would have said if this was the first night I met him in the dream forest, where we could all but read each other’s minds. I would have said, “You’re crazy and you know it.” 

And he was, I knew. But not in the way it used to be. Thinking of him as crazy used to be a way to dehumanize him. To disassociate myself from him. To justify why his life didn’t matter and mine did. 

It wasn’t like that anymore. Kavinsky was sick. He needed help. I ached for him the way I did for Gansey when I caught him awake at three in the morning gluing together pieces of cardboard. The way I did for Adam when his beautiful face was covered in bruises. Even the way I did for Noah, when I found out he was a ghost. Somewhere along the way Kavinsky became someone I thought of as a friend. When did that happen? Last time we spoke? Or as long ago as when he taught me how to control my dreams? I didn’t know. 

Kavinsky exhaled. “I get it. Went too far. Don’t answer.”

I tugged at my leather bands, unable to look him in the eyes. 

“You weren’t good for me, K,” I said. 

He scoffed at this, already seeming to be in a slightly better mood seeing I wasn’t too insulted or pissed off to respond. 

He snapped so I would look at him. 

“I’m like candy, man. I’m not good for anybody. But that’s not what I asked,” he said. “I asked if you had a sweet tooth.” 

I laughed, humorlessly, but smiled genuinely. I couldn’t lie to him. 

“Yeah, man,” I said. “I did. It was you for a while, okay? But we’re both better off. I’m not good for you either.” 

“Nothing I want is ever good for me. But that’s the thing,” He shook his head, and placed the end of each of his pinky fingers on each side of his mouth and pulled the corners back into a sickly sweet smile. “All my teeth are sweet.”

Then Kavinsky handed me another cigarette. I lit it and watched how he watched me smoke it. His gaze made me shiver.

“So, when are you going to ask Parrish out?” he asked, all nonchalantly. Like this was something we could just talk about.

“I’m not,” I said, honestly.

“Why?” he asked. “You’ve got nothing to lose.”

“I don’t want to fuck what we have up.”

Kavinsky scoffed, as if that was a ridiculous reason, and I shook my head. 

“My friends matter to me, K,” I said. “You should try giving a shit –”

“Not that,” he said. “I have friends too, you know. And for the record, I give more shits about them than I ever have myself. But if what you’re telling me is true, and telling Parrish you’re gay for him would make him stop being friends with you, then fuck him.” 

I controlled my expression so he wouldn’t see how much that meant to me. 

“I haven’t even come out yet, man,” I said, dousing my second cigarette and tossing it. “Figured I’d do that first.”

“Well, if you’re not planning to come out any time soon, you should make more of an effort to hide it.” 

I rolled my eyes. “Just because I don’t call guys I like fags and hit on every girl I see, doesn’t mean –”

“Yes, it does, Ronan,” Kavinsky cut me off, and his tone was so serious my voice caught in my throat and I couldn’t speak.

I looked him in the eyes. 

“Why do you think I do it?” he asked, “Because I just love being a douchebag? I don’t. But I have to. You know, in my world, your dad tries to kill you because your teacher told him she saw you holding hands with another boy at recess. And in case you haven’t noticed, you and I live in the same Goddamn nightmare of a world.”

I stammered for a moment, unable to settle on what to say first, or if I should say anything at all. “That’s why your dad tried to kill you?”

He smiled, lecherously, and shook his head, but not like he was saying no. Like he couldn’t stand to think about it. His eyes were far off, as if looking into the past. 

“You have to watch your back, Ronan,” he said, quietly. “If I could tell about you, other people can too. You should get a girl. Some loudmouth who’ll kiss ‘n tell.” 

I laid down on the hood beside him, gazing at the same sky flooded with the same stars. His bare arm was close enough to mine I could feel the warmth of his body. If he shivered I’d feel the hairs on his arm rise and brush against mine. 

“I can’t,” I said, but just as soon added, “I mean, I could. But I just can’t fake it, man. We were out on this boat a while ago. Gansey, Parrish, Blue and Blue’s cousin whoever-the-fuck. I can’t remember. But anyway, she wore this orange bikini under her clothes and made a big show of getting undressed in front of us to go swimming.”

Kavinsky was already grinning. 

“And – And I could just see the way she was looking at us. Us guys, I mean. But mostly me. And I could just tell she was trying to get my dick hard in my jeans and by that point Gansey and Adam both needed to be unplugged and plugged back in. But I was just – God, she was such a joke. I couldn’t not laugh.”

Kavinsky laughed too, picturing it. 

“It was like – like someone talking to me in a different language, man. I could tell I was supposed to respond, and how I was supposed to respond, but I didn’t fucking get what the fuck she was saying. So I just laughed. And then – Jesus, after we got off the boat and got ready to head home she tried to get a ride from me. I told her she wasn’t setting foot in my BMW in her soaking wet bikini like any straight guy would give a fuck about his leather seats getting wet if it was her ass that did it. But all I could think about was the leather.” 

“You’re pathetic, Lynch,” Kavinsky said then, grinning. “You might as well just come out then. You’re not fooling anybody looking like you do with no girlfriend.”

My cheeks flared, but I refused to look at him. I sent a quick prayer to God that he couldn’t see it in the dark. 

“What about you?” I asked. 

He shrugged. “Don’t have fuck all to worry about in here. All I have to do is keep my mouth shut and no one will think shit about me.”

“I was asking if you’re gonna come out,” I said. “You know, when you get out of there.” 

He was quiet, but I didn’t think because he was avoiding the question. I looked at him, and he looked like he was thinking. It was weird, seeing him like this. Like he would be when he was alone, I guessed. Or maybe not even then, I realized. How long had it been since Kavinsky had been alone with his thoughts? His _sober_ thoughts? Years, I bet. 

“Scares the everfucking shit out of me, man,” he said. “But, yeah. Can’t keep the lie up the rest of my life. Not unless I die young.”

I flinched. My mind flashbacked to the fourth. The pain I felt now recalling that day was visceral.

“Just, take it from me, Ronan: Watch your back. Even if you come out, and you’re proud or whatever. Watch your back for me, will you? Or – or get someone else to, for fuck’s sake. Since you’re so bad at it.”

I sat up on one elbow to look at him. His expression was so genuinely concerned for me I couldn’t bear it. That something twisting around my heart snapped in my chest. I felt the opposite of when I felt like punching something. I felt like singing again. But not like I normally sang. Like my mother would sing. Something that resonated in my bones. 

The feelings for him I had buried had grown into something new, not thorns of rage, but something that bloomed. 

He scrubbed his hands over his face before sitting up and grabbing his cigarettes. Before he’d even slapped them against his palm, I reached out and pulled them away from him. 

He furrowed his eyebrows at me. “What? You want another –”

He cut himself off as I sat all the way up and placed both my hands on either side of his face. 

He let out a weak breath. His eyes were searching for something in me. 

I leaned in and pressed my lips against his. “Pressed” because I’d never kissed anyone before, and he was too shocked to kiss back – or at least, I hoped that was why. 

I pulled away from him and only got a few inches before he slinked a hand around the nape of my neck and lured me back in. This time he kissed back and lightning zipped down my spine, like it did when I was racing. 

When he tilted his head back, I hovered, with my eyes closed for a second, letting the warmth on my lips flood through me. 

“That was your first,” he breathed. It wasn’t a question. 

“Not yours,” I said. It wasn’t a question either. “Who? How many?”

He smiled, crookedly, while stroking my cheekbone with his thumb, but not like he was the one doing it. Like his arm was acting on its own accord and he couldn’t stop himself. 

“Girls,” he said. “Just – random fucking girls. Doesn’t matter. Can’t remember ‘em. But this,” he said, leaning in to kiss me again, and lingering. A sound escaping his throat when I kissed him harder. “This, I’ll remember. Better than getting high.”

“I’m not a drug,” I said, more flustered than annoyed. But, trying to sound just annoyed. 

“Wrong on two counts now,” he said. 

“What?” 

“Not all drugs are bad for you,” he said, smiling. “You’re one of the ones that’s good for me.” 

“So now I’m both a food that’s bad for you and a drug that’s good for you?” I asked, wearing what I hoped was my least-amused-as-possible expression, though in reality, I was quite amused. 

He laughed. “Well, you’re not supposed to think of pills as candy.”

I shook my head smiling. “But, you do.”

“Hell yeah, I do.”

And then he kissed me like he wanted to overdose. 

…

When I woke the next morning, I felt distinctly as though I’d brought something back with me but couldn’t figure out what. I glanced around my room and in my sheets but there was nothing. 

Then I felt around my body, only for my fingers to land on my lips. 

They were still warm.


	5. Chapter 5

Next time I went back, Kavinsky stood, leaning against the passenger door of the Mitsubishi. He had a cigarette tucked behind one ear, and was scanning the dream forest, apparently waiting for me. I walked up to him, as slowly as I could stand, because I didn’t want to appear too eager. 

Before I got close enough to touch him – which I desperately wanted to do – he stiffened and I stopped in my tracks. 

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest, not before I noticed he was trembling again. 

“What did you tell them?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Don’t fuck with me like that, man. Gansey. Parrish. Your friends,” he said. “Did you tell them?”

I jerked my head back, shocked and insulted. “That we kissed? What if I–”

“So you told them?” he demanded. 

“No, for fuck’s sake,” I spit. “And I won’t since –”

“Good,” he said, and breathed before placing his cigarette in his mouth. He took a moment to light it while I watched him. He exhaled, his hands no longer shaking. “Good to see you still have some sense.”

I stepped away from him, clenching my fists, grinding my teeth. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, K. My friends won’t care if I’m gay. They’re not fucking –”

“Oh drop the spiel, sweetheart,” he spit, pushing himself into an upright position. He pulled his cigarette out of his mouth. “I already told you I don’t care if you come out to your friends. Even if they somehow haven’t figured it out, and you told them today, I don’t think they’d hurt you. But – but I don’t know what they’d do if – if they found out it wasn’t just some guy you kissed. Or – Or Parrish. But _me_. They might not give a shit if you’re gay but they’ll give a shit if it’s me. Every one of them hates me. And – I get why. I hate me too.”

“Don’t say shit like that, K,” I said, and all my anger fizzled out. All I could think about when he talked like that was him hurting himself again. When he talked like that, it still seemed so likely. How was I supposed to leave him every night if I was afraid he might bring a noose back with him to his cell? 

“What?” he said, not noticing my tone had changed. “They do. You think I didn’t see their faces when I gave you those bracelets? What do you think they’re gonna say when you tell them you’re with me? I mean, fuck, Ronan. You were so scared when you crashed Dick’s Camaro because you thought he wouldn’t let you come back to the place you _lived_. What’s he gonna do if he finds out you’re with me? Did you even fucking _consider_ he might not let you back for _that_? Some fucking friend by the way. Dick can say all he wants about me but none of my friends are afraid I’ll disown them if they break my shit.”

I swallowed. Every word he said was echoing through my mind. I’d never considered any of it. I’d been so elated last time we were together I hadn’t considered any consequences. And though I hadn’t told my friends what happened, it hadn’t been because I was worried what they’d think. I just hadn’t gotten that far yet. There were so many other things to worry about when I was awake. It felt like a different world. A different reality. And kissing Kavinsky really did feel like a dream. Once again, I’d split my world in two, Gansey in one world, Kavinsky in the other, and it had felt nice to prevent the foods on my plate from touching again. I hadn’t gotten to the part where they’d have to merge. 

But even louder than the repetition of his words, or the realization that he was right, was the thought that Kavinsky was no longer giving me an ultimatum. I didn’t have to be with him or against him. I didn’t have to choose him or my friends. He wanted me to have both, even if they didn’t like him and he didn’t like them. In fact, he was scared that by being with him I’d lose the other. 

He’d changed so much since the fourth. 

“They’ll understand,” I said. 

He gaped at me. “You’re not telling them.”

“I’m not going to lie,” I said. 

“Ronan,” he said, stepping forward, close enough for me to feel the warmth of his body. He placed his hands on my shoulders, for emphasis. “For the love of God, did you listen to a fucking word I said?”

“They’ll understand,” I said, placing my hands on his waist and pulling him into me. He looked caught off guard, but didn’t push away. “Or they won’t. It doesn’t matter.”

He placed his cigarette between my lips. 

“Now you’re lying,” he said. 

I inhaled and exhaled smoke in his face without pulling my arms away from him. His features softened. 

“I swear. You don’t know them like I do. They’ll understand,” I said, and then, after considering what he said about me being afraid I’d lose Gansey’s friendship over a car, let alone a boyfriend, made up my mind. “Gansey will understand. If he doesn’t, I won’t be friends with him until he does.” 

“Don’t come crying to me when he doesn’t, then,” he said, without the slightest conviction in his voice. 

I took the cigarette out of my mouth and placed it on my ear. Then I bent down and kissed him, good and long. He exhaled into it, wrapping his arms more tightly around my shoulders.

He breathed when our lips parted. I pressed my forehead against his. 

“I won’t have to,” I said.

“You better be right, Lynch.”

…

I told Gansey the moment I woke up from that dream. 

It was the middle of the night. One of the few nights I decided to stay at Monmouth instead of The Barnes since forging a new will by my Dad. He was up, paging through his computer and his phone simultaneously, like it was the middle of the day and not four in the morning. 

“I kissed Kavinsky,” I said, like I would say anything. And I sounded like me, saying anything. But my throat felt like it was closing up and my heart was pounding hard enough to leave a bruise on my ribs. 

Gansey didn’t respond at first. I sensed that he was weighing the various ways he could respond in his head. I didn’t like it. He looked the way he did when he talked to a teacher or a parent. 

“Say something,” I said. 

“I take it you’re telling me this because you plan to kiss him again?” Gansey said, like the dweeb he was. 

“Yeah, maybe even with tongue,” I said, sarcastically. Gansey didn’t look amused. Which bothered me even more. 

“Does he love you?” 

I jerked my head back. That wasn’t what I was expecting him to say. 

“God, man, this isn’t a fucking Disney movie. I can kiss someone and not –”

“He can,” Gansey said. “But you can’t. I know you, Ronan. You wouldn’t have kissed him if you weren’t serious about him. I just need to know that he is too. I don’t want you to get hurt.” 

That shut me up for a minute. He was right. I’d never been in any kind of a relationship before, and not just because I was gay and other openly gay teenage boys were hard to come by. I wasn’t interested in anything that wasn’t ride-or-die and that was how it had always been, no matter how many little crushes I’d had. I would have never actually kissed anyone unless I wanted them around for good. 

“He is,” I said. 

Gansey thought for a long moment again, shrugged, and returned his attention to his journal. 

“Alright. Tell him he has my blessing, then,” Gansey said.

I stared at him. “That’s it?” 

He looked at me like he wasn’t sure I was serious. “I guess. But I mean it, Lynch. He’d better not hurt you.”

I told Adam next. I was at his place above the church, just visiting. I’d made a habit of heading their after church on Sunday. Any time I came over he was bent over his desk, doing homework. I wondered if he ever actually slept, or if he just stayed awake every day until he passed out.

Adam was less reserved than Gansey. 

He made a disgusted sound. “Why that prick? Of all people.” 

Though I was endeared that neither Gansey nor Adam seemed at all preoccupied with my sexuality – Kavinsky had been right after all, they must have known – it still stung a little bit that neither of them seemed _happy_ for me. 

“You don’t know him like I do,” I said, echoing what I’d said to Kavinsky about them. 

“I don’t need to know him well to know you have some shitty taste in men,” Adam said. 

I almost smiled. If only he knew I’d liked him at one point too. Before my heart went all-in on Kavinsky in our dreams. I wondered what Adam would have said about my taste in men if he knew. 

“Well, you don’t have to like it,” I said. “I just thought I’d warn you it’s a thing that’s happening.”

Adam sighed deeply. “What if he kidnaps your brother again? Or something worse? What makes you so sure –”

“He’s not doing anything for five years,” I snapped. “Which, he told Matthew he’s grateful for. Don’t know about you, but that makes me pretty sure.”

Adam raised his eyebrows. “Really? He talked to your brother?”

“Yup. Hand-wrote him a letter and everything.” 

Adam looked torn. “I just don’t want you to get hurt.” 

“Gansey said that too,” I said, “But I can handle myself.”

Adam didn’t look convinced, but sighed, giving in. “You don’t have to. You’ve got us.”

“Give him a chance,” I said, and the more he doubted me, the surer I became. 

“You’re not really giving me a choice.” 

“You have a choice,” I said, “You can take us or leave us.” 

Then I left his place. 

Later he would text me and tell me he was sorry, and that he’d give Kavinsky a chance. He hoped I was right that Kavinsky wouldn’t hurt me. My chest felt lighter afterwards. 

Next was Noah. He was the easiest. 

“Makes sense,” Noah said, phasing in and out of visibility in the passenger seat of my BMW.

“Really?” I asked, “Why?”

“He’s got something you need that’s missing from the rest of us,” Noah said, cryptically. 

“You don’t hate him?” I asked. 

“For what?” 

“For…that race in Gansey’s car?” I asked.

“I hate racing,” Noah said. And he looked around the car as if he also hated being in cars. 

“What about for…Matthew?” 

“Do you hate him for Matthew?” he asked. 

“No,” I said.

“Then why would I?” 

“Thanks, Noah,” I said, and he smiled brightly. 

The last person I told was Blue. She and I weren’t as close. Rather, we existed in each other’s lives because we were both important to Gansey, not because we were important to each other. But I’d spent a lot of time around her, and she was growing on me. Plus, she had the least reason to hate Kavinsky out of all my friends.

“He’s gay?” she said, and there was a note in her voice I couldn’t understand. 

“Yes,” I said. “So am I if you missed that.”

“Well yeah,” she said, like this was obvious. Apparently, I really couldn’t keep a secret. “But I didn’t know _he_ was.”

Now I recognized the note in her voice was relief. 

“He hit on you.”

“Kind of,” she said, with the most disdainful toddler expression on her tiny face. “But I guess that doesn’t matter now. Since –”

“He’s in prison,” I offered. 

“Pshaw,” she said. “Because he’s got it bad for you.”

I snorted. “Really bad. It’s embarrassing.” 

“Not as embarrassing as how bad you have it for him,” she said, and smiled keenly at me. 

I had to fight the happiness bubbling inside me. It was over. My friends knew I was gay. They knew Kavinsky was my boyfriend. Everything was going to be okay. At least, this small facet of my existence would be, anyway. And I could finally breathe and talk about it at the same time. 

“What did you say?” I asked, “I couldn’t hear you from way down there.” 

She whipped her head in my direction – which was up – and said, “No one will ever be surprised you have a boyfriend in prison.”

I couldn’t not laugh.


	6. Chapter 6

It was over a week later by the time I had come out to all my friends and could return to Kavinsky and tell him how it went. 

He looked confused as I walked up to him and sat on the hood of the Mitsubishi beside him. I realized it must have been because I was smiling like an idiot. 

He opened his mouth to speak but I kissed him quiet. He threw his cigarette so that he could wrap his arms around my shoulders and trail his fingers down my buzzed scalp. He sighed into the kissing and leaned in for more when I pulled away from him. 

I smirked at him. 

To which he replied, “Someone’s happy to see me.”

“Actually that’s just a beer can in my pants,” I said, and he playfully shoved me off him. 

“You wish, Lynch.”

“No, _you_ wish.” 

He laughed again and I realized I couldn’t get enough of it. I wanted to make him laugh like that every day. As often as I could. Something told me that Kavinsky hadn’t laughed at enough harmless jokes in his life. 

“So are you ever gonna tell me what they said or just be a fucking tease about –” he started. 

I kissed him again, but not like I had before. Not quite as happily. More to reassure him than anything. It wouldn’t sound as good to him as it did to me. 

“I came out to them,” I said. “And –”

“And they were like, ‘yeah, no shit’,” he said, smirking. 

“And told them about you,” I said, ignoring him. 

His face sobered. He sat up and threaded one trembling hand through his hair. “What’d you say, exactly? About me?”

“That they were either with us or against us.” I sat up and rested my head on his shoulder. 

He huffed out a humorless laugh. “How’d they take that?”

“Better than I did when you said it to me,” I breathed. Ever since the fourth, I hated thinking about that day I drove off with The Pig, after spending days, maybe weeks with Kavinsky dreaming. 

“Shouldn’t have even said it,” Kavinsky said. 

“I meant it.” 

“I didn’t mean you,” he said, just as quietly now. He trailed his hand down my scalp and rested his arm on my shoulders. “What’d they say, Ronan?” 

“They weren’t thrilled but…they’re just worried.”

“Oh yeah? About which part? Is it the drugs? Or the kidnapping? Or the setting myself on fire, that worries them?” His voice was bitter now. 

“They’re worried you’ll hurt me.” 

Kavinsky jerked his head back. “Whoa, what?” he asked, and before I could answer, he placed his hand on my cheek and stroked my cheek bone. His eyes flared. 

“I would _never_ hurt you, Ronan,” he said. “You have to know that. There’s a lot of shit I can’t promise I’ll never do but – that day, if I was capable of hurting you – I would have done it then. You got it?”

I smiled at him and touched his face the way he touched mine. 

I thought of the night Gansey and I arrived at Kavinsky’s substance party and Kavinsky told me we couldn’t be there unless we brought a substance. I shoved him against his car and punched him in the face, hard enough to bleed. When I did it, I fully expected to be hit back. Who wouldn’t hit back if they’d just been made to bleed? And from his perspective, I’d had no Goddamn reason either. At the time, if someone had punched me – even if it was him – I would have hit back. But he didn’t. He’d even seemed amused, rather than pissed. I didn’t understand it then, but I did now. 

If it had been someone else – anybody else but me – he would have hit back.

But it _was_ me. 

“They didn’t mean it like that,” I said to him, and smiled. “And you couldn’t even if you tried.”

“You’re right,” he said, refusing to take the bait. “I don’t care how they meant it either. They can’t honestly think _I_ could break _your_ heart, can they?”

I furrowed my brows at him. “If you broke up with me, yeah. Cheated on me. Kidnapped my brother again.”

He still wore the most severe expression. 

“Jesus, K,” I said, “I’m just fucking with you. I wouldn’t honestly be doing this if I –”

“You don’t have any fucking clue how long I’ve wanted you, do you?”

“What?”

“And I was finally starting to accept that I’d never have you. That’s never happened before, by the way. I’ve never not gotten what I want. And not the way Dick III gets what he wants, where he wins everyone over, you know, by dressing like a fucking golf-caddie twink every Goddamn day and having rich parents who bathe him in money every month. I mean I fucking stole everything I ever wanted. Except you. And I – I did _try_ to do it right, you know. I mean, you know what fucking – fucking _balls_ it took to give you those bracelets in front of your friends? But that didn’t work because you didn’t want me back. So then – then when you had me teach you how to dream…everything that happened after that…was me _trying_ to steal you.”

He exhaled. Since he was shaking again, he fumbled around for his cigarettes and lit one. But he continued to shake even after he was smoking. 

“And when it didn’t work, when I couldn’t have you – I saw no point in living. Not because you were the only thing I ever wanted and couldn’t have, but because I realized then – you were the only thing I ever really wanted. Like, _actually_ wanted. Which meant, I didn’t want anything else in my life anymore.”

“Why are you telling me this now, K? I don’t want to think about –”

“Because you’d have to be out of your fucking mind to think that after all that – after realizing I’d rather fucking die than not have you – that I’d break up with you. Or cheat on you. Or do anything ever again that I know might – might make me lose you.”

He dragged on his cigarette and then sunk down on the hood of his car so that he was face to face with me. 

“This –” he said, and gestured between us, “was never supposed to happen. You know the first time I ever stole was on accident? I was in the store with my mom – before all the drugs and plastic surgery and fucking neglect – and I had a fucking toy in my hand, right? I was gonna ask my mom to get it for me in the check-out line – because I knew she’d say no unless the cashier was there, judging her for buying herself five hundred dollars-worth of shoes and purses and shit and not buying her six-year-old a fucking Hot Wheels car – but by the time we got to checkout my mom had me carrying other stuff. I put the car in my pocket so that it was easier to carry her shit and I totally forgot it was there. Forgot to ask my mom at checkout to buy it too. Because she was – I don’t know. Yelling at me for something. I think for dragging something she was about to buy on the floor. Yeah, it was a dress or something. And it was long. And she had me carrying it because she didn’t want it to get wrinkled in the cart. And then we just…walked out. The sensors didn’t pick up the toy and we got home and I found it and I just – just remember how fucking amazing it felt. To have something that I wasn’t supposed to. That I didn’t deserve. _That_ ,” he said now, looking back at me, “Is what this is, to me. Something I desperately wanted, didn’t earn, don’t deserve, and got anyway. I’d – I’d be a complete fucking _idiot_ to get cocky and walk back in the store with it.”

For a long moment I just stared at him. I’d never heard him talk so much. And with so little pizazz or arrogance. He meant everything he said. 

I didn’t know what to say. I’d all but forgotten how to speak half way through his story. I couldn’t explain it, but his story felt familiar to me. Like I’d heard it before, though I knew I hadn’t. Maybe it was just because that was exactly how I felt about being with him.

“K,” I said, about to think of something to say – anything that might express what his words meant to me. 

But he shook his head and pulled his cigarette out of his mouth. “Joey. It’s what everyone called me before I went to Aglionby. Before all –”

He waved his hand around as if trying to reel in the words he was looking for.

“Drugs and theft and cars and shit,” he said. “Before I moved here. Back in Jersey. Call me Joey. Do _not_ call me Joey in front of your friends. And if _they_ ever call me anything but Kavinsky spit on their shoes for me.” 

I took his cigarette from his hand and tossed it. He glanced at me.

“The fuck?” he asked, pulling out another cigarette. 

“Joey,” I said, and he shut his mouth. I slid my hand around the nape of his neck. He needed no more invitation. He twisted so that he could face me laying down and kiss me. But he didn’t kiss me like I kissed him. I kissed him with urgency, with need in my lungs. I pulled him tight against my chest before threading my fingers through his hair. He sighed into the kiss and began to trail the arm that wasn’t pressed against the hood down my back, just the same way he did when he touched my tattoo that day in the sweet Henrietta sunshine. 

His fingers were so light on my back I almost couldn’t feel them. Gentler than I ever imagined Joey could be with me. 

I remembered how I felt that day, with the pad of his finger on my spine. How if I so much as flinched I’d never make it back. 

It was no different now.

Only this time, I moved.


	7. Chapter 7

I curled my fingers under the hem of his prison uniform shirt, rucking it up an inch at a time until he yanked himself away.

“Oh, fuck yes,” he breathed, and tossed the shirt over his head onto the dream forest’s grassy floor. 

And then his hands were doing the same to my black A-shirt. Just as he had, I pulled it up and off myself. He grinned the moment our chests touched and a shudder ran down my back. I couldn’t think of anything that had ever felt nearly as good as the warmth of his bare chest against me, and his hands sliding over my back, and just giving in. Finally, giving in. To being gay. To wanting him. It was the best feeling I’d ever had. 

I drank the sight of him in. He’d gained weight since his imprisonment, most likely because he was sober, and the cocaine couldn’t make him skeletal any longer. I couldn’t feel his spine on his nape, the way I would have been able to during his trial not that long ago. His stomach wasn’t concave. It was both soft and firm and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the hallow near his sternum, or the dip under his ribs, or the happy trail between the V of his sharp hipbones, rising just above the waistband of his uniform.

He looked at me just as hungrily, only he wasn’t paralyzed by his desire. He was kissing along my neck and collarbones with his hand pressed against my pecks, and then my abs, and then my hips and then his fingers sunk into the soft flesh just at the cusp of my ass and he groaned. 

“Fuck, Ronan,” he said. “Fuck, why are you doing this to me?” 

But he kissed me again before I could answer and it was another long while before I could tear my lips and tongue and teeth away from his. After, his mouth was rubbed raw and he bit on his lip like it wasn’t enough. 

I felt him, hard, pressed against my thigh. I knew he could feel me too. The slightest friction could make me moan.

“Tell me to stop,” he said.

“You want to stop?” I asked, breathing heavy.

“No. That is the absolute last fucking thing I want.”

“Then why would I tell you to stop?” I asked.

“You’re a virgin. I’m not oblivious just because I’m turned on,” he said, easing himself into a position that wouldn’t allow me to feel how hard he was. 

“I’m not some twelve-year old girl, you know,” I said. “It’s not like I thought there’d be a bed sprinkled with rose petals or – or candles and shit.”

“I’m just telling you,” he said, quieter now. “If you don’t tell me to stop, I’m going to keep going. But if you don’t want me to –”

“I got it, K,” I said, and then corrected myself. “Joey. You don’t have to be so –”

“Well I think I do.”

And then I remembered how taken aback he was the first night I visited him, when I brought up dropping the soap in prison. He’d seemed genuinely freaked out I’d misunderstood him on the fourth. Since then, I’d forgotten about it, because all I paid any attention to when I thought back to that conversation was the look on his face when he said _because I thought it already_ was _us._ He’d only touched me at all because he thought we were already together. Like we were now. 

“You know, I never actually thought you’d –”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just tell me to stop. If – if you know, I cross a line. Got it?” 

I nodded. 

And then he rolled me over onto my back and as my back lay flat, it sunk into something soft, rather than solid and smooth like the hood of his Mitsubishi. I opened my eyes and turned my head to look around. Joey took this opportunity to kiss along my throat. 

“You’re not getting the roses and candles,” he said, as I took in the sight of the impossibly comfortable king bed he’d conjured up in place of his car. 

I laughed. 

“What?” he said then, and I could hear he’d asked it with a smile. I could feel his teeth on my jugular. His breath was warm, and uneven when he chuckled. “You thought I was just going to bend you over the hood of my car, didn’t you?”

“Of course I fucking did. What kind of question is that?” I asked, laughing. 

He looked up at me. There was a smirk on his face and a look in his eyes like he was admiring something on fire. “You think so low of me, Lynch.”

Then he sat back so that he could ease his pants off. 

“You should see the shit they make us wear,” he said, sitting at the foot of the bed pulling his socks off. A second later he lifted the beige pants he’d been given and tugged out a pair of tighty-white-ies. He held them in the air like a patriot would a flag. 

I sat up, momentarily distracted by the hilarity of it. 

“Oh my god,” I said. “What the fuck. Oh my god. You sneaky shit, undressing before I could see you in them.” 

He grinned at me and tossed all his clothes away.

When he returned to me I caught a glance of his entire body and another shudder ran through me. While he kissed and bit my earlobe and throat I gazed at the length of his cock, unable to believe that after all these years of hiding who I was, and repressing my desire for men, that I got to see him like this and – 

I reached my hand out to touch him. He felt heavy and hot in my hand, the skin soft as velvet and I pressed my thumb against the underside of the head, which made him wet. I stroked him loosely a few times. He cursed under his breath and then he was mouthing down the length of my chest and stomach. He tugged my belt off the buckle and then yanked it in one move through the belt loops. He undid the button and zipper with one hand while the other wedged its way under the waistband. Finally, he pulled my jeans and boxers down at once, followed by my boots and socks. 

Immediately, I felt his hot breath along my length when he returned to waist-height. Like I had him, he experimented with touching me, stroking me just like I would myself. 

“Fuck, Ronan,” he said, and I could hear in his voice he liked what he saw. 

I jolted as he unceremoniously slid his mouth over me as far as he could go. I held in a moan, biting down on one knuckle. It already felt so fucking good.

As he went down on me, I tangled my fingers in his hair. He didn’t stop, even as he conjured up a bottle of lube. Even as he hitched one of my legs up so that he had better access. Even as he began to slowly insert his middle finger inside of me. 

Though I was certain he’d never done this with a guy before, I figured he must have had some experience with it. His fingers were so gentle – just the way they were on my back – and his mouth on my cock compensated for the slight and inevitable discomfort that came with being stretched. He pinned my hips down with one arm so that he could keep me where he wanted me, even as I moaned and began to writhe. He wouldn’t let me fuck his mouth. He didn’t want me to come yet. 

I couldn’t believe his patience. The patience to pause when I hissed. The patience to spend so long getting one finger in, and so long before he attempted the second, and then so long before finding my prostate. All while sucking me, too slowly, so that I wouldn’t get close and come before we even started. And all without even touching himself too. 

When his fingers finally felt nothing but sweet against my prostate, and my cock twitched against the back of his throat, he could tell I was close and cut me off, leaving me panting. He bit down on his raw bottom lip, watching as he slid his slicked fingers out of me. The loss was agonizing. I reached for him and he laid back down on top of me. He pulled one hand away from my body to slick his own length and help guide himself inside me. 

We both groaned when he bottomed out, but for different reasons. It stung to be stretched this wide.

He on the other hand, shook on top of me, clutching at the sheets. 

“Goddamn it,” he said, and I snickered against his shoulder, because he sounded pissed. He sounded like he’d just stepped in dog shit, and I couldn’t help laughing. 

“Already?” I asked.

“Shut your mouth, Lynch, or I’ll wake up,” he said, and I grinned. 

“You wouldn’t give this up.”

“I have _zero_ qualms jerking off in my cell,” he said, “I have the bottom bunk.” 

“Gross. Get on with it already.”

“Keep sweetalkin’ me and I won’t be able to last.” He rolled his eyes. 

Before I could say something witty back, he grasped onto a headboard that wasn’t there a second before, and started to thrust. 

I gasped, curling around his body and clinging to him. His pace was shallow but steady and it was enough to make my eyes roll back. We started kissing again, more and more desperately with each second that passed. My fingers dug into his back and he moaned hot against my throat before stalling, and taking a moment to breathe. Then he placed his hands on the underside of my thighs and pushed them back, while inching his own knees further apart on the bed. 

Joey started fucking me like he meant it now, faster, harder and deeper than he had before. His cock brushed against my sweet spot just right, and a vision of Joey driving his Mitsubishi and shifting from third to fourth gear flashed behind my eyes. I realized only then that he’d left the car hanging on purpose. He’d make it pray for release and deny it until he was racing and his car was desperate from being teased. Then and _only_ then would he give it what it wanted from him. 

I started to claw at his back and bite his shoulders, leaving marks on him he’d take back with him into reality. 

“That’s it,” he groaned against my ear, “Fuck, whatever you need, baby.”

Hearing him call me that made me tremble and I started to rut down on him, meeting his thrusts halfway. He cursed, tearing himself from my fingernails and teeth in his flesh so that he could prop both of my ankles on his shoulders. When he returned to me, he bit my bottom lip and started to ram his cock into me unevenly, his whole body shaking now. 

“That good?” he asked, but he was taunting, his voice low and husky. 

“Yeah, yeah,” I gasped back, “Just –”

“Just what, baby?” he asked, in the same teasing tone.

“Fu – _Fuck_ K, just – Just touch –”

“K?” he asked, biting at my earlobe. 

“Jo – Joey,” I choked, at the exact moment the head of his cock pressed into my sweet spot and I moaned. “Fuck, I’ll do –”

Before I could reach myself, Joey had both my wrists pinned over my head with one hand. The other cupped my face and stroked my cheekbone. He stopped thrusting and I held back a truly vile insult directed at God. 

“Just what?” he asked. 

“Touch me,” I growled at him, rutting down on him some more, in attempt to persuade him to start fucking me again. 

“Say please,” he said, trailing his thumb along my lower lip. He pressed his thumb against my teeth and when I sucked on it he lost his composure for a second and whimpered. 

“Please,” I said, once I’d released his thumb. 

“Please, who?” he asked, the hand on my cheek trailing down my neck and pecks and stomach. Hovering painfully close to my dripping cock. 

“Please, Joey,” I said, “For fuck’s sake, _please_. I’m – I’m so fucking –”

He didn’t give me time to finish my sentence. He wrapped his free hand around my shaft and started stroking loosely before he resumed fucking me unevenly and so, so fucking perfectly. He let go of my wrists so that he could find leverage in the mattress and I held on to him by the nape of his neck with both my arms and legs, closing my eyes and cursing louder and louder until I wasn’t making any noise at all and just panting into the night air. 

Finally – _Finally_ , his hand stroked over the head of my cock just right and I jolted, the pleasure white-hot for one moment of ecstasy – and I came over his hand and my stomach, crying his name. 

“Oh fuck, fuck, you’ll be the death of me,” he moaned, watching me come down from my high. Then he was cradling my head as he fucked me to the brink of his own climax. 

“Fuck, baby,” he breathed. Then: “F – fuck, Ronan, I – _Obicham te!_ ”

He kissed me, brutally and passionately, groaning into it as his body shook.

Then he went slack over me.

We both lay for a long time, curled into each other, catching our breath. 

Eventually I had to speak or I’d implode.

“Was that –?”

“Bulgarian,” Joey said. “Just slipped.”

“No, not that,” I said, and hesitated before adding, “What did you –Was that ‘I love you’?” 

Joey looked me in the eyes, and as he pulled out, immediately rolled away from me. 

“That a crime?” he asked, his voice real low and quiet. I could tell he was trying to be – himself, I supposed, or who he thought he was. Kavinsky.

But he wasn’t. His voice tremored when he asked. Joey.

“Just need to know that wasn’t because –”

“Because of the sex?” he responded, “It wasn’t. I’ve never told anyone else I’ve fucked I loved them.”

A moment of quiet passed. 

“I’ve never told anyone else I love them, actually. Except my mom, I think. When I was little.”

I swallowed. 

“You don’t have to get all – sappy on me, Lynch. It’s – Don’t make a big deal about it. And don’t say it back just because you – you pity me, or whatever. I’m a big boy. I can –”

“Don’t tell me I can’t tell you I love you,” I said, without even thinking about it. “I do.”

Joey hitched himself up on one shoulder to look at me. 

“Don’t lie to me,” he said. 

“I’m not. I wouldn’t.”

Joey cupped my face again, looking into my eyes. Then he kissed me, slow and long. 

When he pulled away, he let out another shaky breath. “Fuck, I need a cigarette.” 

He rolled over in the bed so that he could lean over the side and pull his cigarettes out of his pants’ pocket. As he did, I waved away the mess on my stomach – which I wished I could do while awake – and conjured up a comforter and pillows for us. Lighting his cigarette, he raised an eyebrow at me but said nothing. 

Before he could roll all the way over, I inched up behind him and wrapped my arm around his waist, spooning him. I placed a kiss in the center of his back, and the peach fuzz stood on end to greet my lips. Goosebumps rose all along his back. He froze, completely still. 

“You okay?” I asked. 

“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah. This is weird.”

“What is?”

“I usually just leave, after. You know. Or she does. This is – just weird.”

I started to pull away from him, heart sinking, when he clutched on to my wrist and wrapped my arm back around him. Then he tucked himself closer into my chest and pulled the blanket up over our shoulders. He smoked for a long minute while I held him. Gradually, the tension in his body unwound, and he relaxed against my body. I rested my chin on his shoulder, and when I did, my face accidentally bumped his. 

His cheek was wet.


	8. Chapter 8

Tonight, I went to bed early. It would take a long time for me to envision everything I wanted to conjure in the dream forest. 

…

Joey arrived, days later in dream forest time, but in real life, only a couple of hours later. He walked up to me from a distance, through the grass and wildflowers blooming. The wind blew lazily through the trees. Birds chirped in nearby trees. 

His eyes weren’t on me. They were above me, gazing at the house I’d built with my imagination. A perfect replica of The Barns, with its weathered wood siding and old shutters on the windows. I sat on the porch, beneath the awning, as the sun blared down on his fair cheekbones, just waiting. I realized this was the first time we were in the dream forest during daylight. 

“You’ve been busy,” he said, still glancing from the roof to the walls to the wrap-around balcony and to the path that lead right to my feet. 

I shrugged, hoping he wouldn’t attempt to guess just how long. It had felt like the days, not the hours, to me. 

“What is this?” he asked, “This isn’t that garbage factory you live in with Dick.” 

“I don’t live there anymore,” I said. “I’ve been staying here. Where I grew up.”

Joey’s eyes widened in understanding. Then he looked at me. “You gonna invite me in?”

…

There was so much I wanted to show him. So much I wanted to do with him. I really wanted to cook for him, though I knew he wouldn’t be able to taste it like it was real. It would just taste however he imagined it tasted, just like smoking his cigarettes was how I imagined smoking and not at all how it actually was. I’d have to wait until he got out for something like that. 

I wanted to watch TV with him, like life was normal and he wasn’t in prison. But the shows and movies would only be as accurate as my memory was, and vice versa, if we were watching something he wanted to show me. I’d have to wait for real life for that experience too. 

I also wanted to show him more than just the main house. The animals that had fallen asleep. All my dad’s dream things. I wanted to introduce him to my Mom, however awkward that would be if I ever got the opportunity. 

But we just walked around my house. He asked me stuff about my childhood. He asked me about my dad, the dreamer. My mom the dream. And my brothers. I answered all his questions, but not in any great depth. I didn’t think either of us were ready to spill all we held inside about our families, which was why I refrained from asking him anything more about his own life. He’d tell me when he could handle it. 

Eventually we found ourselves in my childhood room, with all its clutter. His fingers trailed along the undying dream bouquet I’d given to my mother as a child. I’d brought it up here since moving back in. Then he sat on my bed. I sat beside him.

“So this is where you’re sleeping,” he said, “Right now, in real life?”

I nodded at him.

“Which side?” he asked.

“Outside,” I said, since my bed was pushed into a corner. He laid down exactly where my body laid, in reality. The sun filtered through my blinds and stretched across his face and body. I leaned over to slink them up and out of the way. I wanted to see him in the light. 

Then I laid beside him. He rolled on his side to face me. 

“Why are you showing me this?” he asked. 

“It’s more comfortable than the hood of a car.” 

He shook his head dismissively. “I could have just brought the bed back. Why the whole house? Everything in it?”

I exhaled. “Because I want to bring you back here. When you get out. I want you to live with me.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I have a feeling Dick –”

“Gansey isn’t in charge of me,” I said, quietly. His eyes met mine. I shrugged. “And in any case, he’s already over it. They all are. That’s not going to change in five years.”

“Less,” he said. “If I’m good.”

I remembered then that he got a lesser sentence for pleading guilty right away. Whereas he would have gotten ten years if found guilty by a jury, he only got the five with an opportunity to get out on parole. I thanked God silently, then pulled him in by his nape and kissed him. “ _Be_ good, Joey.”

He nodded. “Count on it.”

“That’s not all I want.” 

He winced, like he knew what I was about to say would sting. “What do you want?” 

“I want you to stay clean when you get out.”

He closed his eyes and rolled over onto his back, looking exasperated. “And if I can’t?”

“Rehab,” I said. “But you can. You are. After five years it –”

“It’s not the same when you’re out in the real world, Ronan,” he said. “And you have to deal with everything.”

“That brings me to the other thing I want.” 

He inhaled and exhaled once hard, before meeting my gaze. “What else?” 

“Therapy,” I said. “I can’t be your anti-depressant forever, Joey. You need help.”

“Fucking – what the fuck is a therapist gonna say to me anyway?” he said, sitting up. “‘You’re fucked up because your –’”

“I don’t know what they’re going to say,” I said, cutting him off. “But I can’t be with you if it’s the only thing that’s stopping you from killing yourself. You can’t put that on me. You need to be okay without me.”

He jerked away from me, and sat off the edge of the bed. “You’re already planning the day you dump me.”

“That’s not it,” I said, and sat up so that I could drop a leg on either side of his body and wrap my arms around his waist from behind. He stiffened, but didn’t pull away. “I know what it’s like to stop hating yourself and I want that for you. More than anything. And it won’t be the same if I’m the only reason you no longer hate yourself. You have to do it on your own.” 

He leaned into me, resting the back of his head on my shoulders. “Fine. If that’s what it will take –”

“It’s not ‘what it will take,’ Joey,” I said. “You tried to kill yourself and lived. Not doing anything to help you deal with shit is the same as walking back in the store, but with your life, not the toy. I’m just telling you not to walk back in the store. Please. It’s only because I love you.”

He let out a shaky breath. “Okay. But I get to ask for something then too.”

“Hmm,” was the noise I made, pressed against his neck. I didn’t care what he asked. I was so relieved he’d agreed to my conditions. 

“Keep dreaming,” he said. 

I snorted. “Why wouldn’t I? You think I don’t –”

“I mean, even if we break up. Keep dreaming. Keep coming to see me in the forest,” he said, and then, almost too quietly to hear, “Please.” 

I swallowed. My eyes welled, and I was grateful he couldn’t see it. I blinked them back like I always did. 

“I promise,” I said, though I knew that would never happen. I wasn’t going to break up with him. 

“ _Obicham te_ ,” he said. 

Then he spun around, pushed me on my back, and straddled me. 

We kissed slowly. After all, even though the sun had set in the dream while we were talking, it was still early in reality. 

And the night belonged to us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading everyone.
> 
> I hope this story was as cathartic and meaningful for you to read as it was for me to write. I feel like I can breathe again.
> 
> If you're curious, my tumblr URL is oryx-and-thickney.


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